In 1998, a band called the Marvelous 3 had a minor hit on alternative rock radio with "Freak of the Week," from their album, Hey! Album. They were one of a series of mostly forgettable alt-rockers who came and went quickly in the late '90s—late, unlamented acts like Marcy Playground, Nine Days, SR-71 and so on. The Marvelous 3 issued a follow-up to Hey! Album, Ready Sex Go, in 2000, which like most follow-ups by those other alt-rock acts, quickly tanked. The band broke up. If they followed the paths of their colleagues, that would have been it.
But then a funny thing happened. Marvelous 3 front man and songwriter Butch Walker, who had come up with the infectious hooks in "Freak of the Week" as well as a remarkable number of catchy songs on Ready Sex Go, started getting calls to write and produce for a number of successful pop-rock artists. Simple Plan, Bowling For Soup, Default, the Donnas and Avril Lavigne all enlisted Walker's services. He went from alt-rock has-been to producer of the moment. Rolling Stone named him Hot Producer in this year's Hot List issue.
Yet his 2002 Arista Records solo debut, Left of Self-Centered, which expanded on the classic-rock influences of Ready Sex Go, sold anemically and didn't produce a single hit. For any other artist, that might have been the end of the line, after a failed band and a failed solo album. But Walker's status as a behind-the-scenes mastermind means he just switched from Arista to Epic, who not only released his new album, Letters, but also gave him his own imprint to sign up-and-coming acts. It's a dichotomy that Walker finds amusing. "Honestly, the producing thing has just turned into a lucrative, well-paid hobby," he says, "because I never set out to do it for a living."
Now, however, that lucrative hobby pays the bills and affords him time to work on his own music and the chance to bring it to a wider audience. Thanks to his relationship with Lavigne, he's been invited to open her latest tour, allowing him to show off the mature, intelligent pop-rock of Letters to thousands of teenage girls. So far, it's a success: He's been selling out of CDs and attracting long lines at his signing table each night. He's also gone onstage during Lavigne's set to sing Blur's "Song 2" while the teen star plays the drums. "All you've got to do is just mumble in Cockney and you're fine," he jokes. "No one's going to ever know."
Although he's had his struggles in the past, it's not hard to imagine Walker back on top with Letters, which eschews the cheeky arena-rock sound of his last two efforts in favor of a more introspective, acoustic singer-songwriter feel. "I kind of just quit trying to shoot myself in the foot with my clever gun," he says, "and always being so sarcastic and witty and stuff like that. I wrote some stuff from my heart instead of my head. I feel like it just came out very genuine."
Though his small but loyal fan base knew him for the ironic, comedic elements of Ready Sex Go and Left of Self-Centered, Walker felt he had to break that mold to be taken seriously as an artist. "I didn't want to become the Jim Carrey of rock 'n' roll," he says. Like Carrey, though, Walker's found a way to balance his humor with his seriousness, as Letters still has punny song titles like "Uncomfortably Numb" and "#1 Summer Jam" while taking on serious subjects like death and heart ache.
Whether Letters hits the top of the charts or just satisfies his small cadre of followers, Walker will keep producing hit records for others. He's so in demand right now, actually, that he's got plenty of vacuous pop stars knocking on his door. For his part, though, he'll stick with people who challenge him, who like Walker, have intelligence and humor behind their sublime pop tunes. "I do like it when someone has something to offer," he laughs, "rather than just being someone famous's sister, if you know what I'm talking about."